← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
HARSH TRUTH About Wealth, Power & Happiness: Life Lessons Everybody Learns Too Late | Tai Lopez PT 1 (Fan Fave)
01:20:29
Loading summary
Transcript194 lines
- [00:00]
Grainger Narrator
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [00:30]
Tai Lopez
If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [01:00]
Tom Bilyeu
The biggest mistake you could make is to allow people to convince you that power is a dirty word. If you want to become a strong and capable person worthy of respect, you should pursue it aggressively. But before you do, you need to develop an understanding of what true power actually is. Is it the ability to get laid and get rich? Or is it something far more profound? Find out right now as my guest Tai Lopez and I map out the true nature of power, wealth and seduction. As somebody who has seen the good and the bad of money and power up close, what is it exactly that you think people get wrong? And why does it matter so much to learn and get it right?
- [01:44]
Tai Lopez
Let's take them one at a time. Wealth. Yeah, I've been poor and I've been rich and I've been in between. Wealthy is better, probably, but more money, more problems, too. I always tell people think about life as like a curve and you call it the kind of efficient frontier. When I had no money, I was sleeping on a couch in a mobile home. I remember seeing $47 in my account and going, and I had very little happiness. Then I built my first funnel and I was one of the first people to use Google AdWords. It was two months old and I went within nine months, I was making basically 8,000amonth on autopilot. My happiness went really high. Then I remember really, when you really start to make money, make a million bucks a week or whatever it is. I lived in Beverly Hills. The, the first month I was there, it was a big house, 17,000 square feet, so you needed a fleet of maids and I used an agency A maid came, worked one day, month later, get a lawsuit. She said she slipped on a banana peel. Wanted money. Wealth. That's the banana peel effect of wealth in the us. All of a sudden you become a target. So what happened on that curve? My happiness went up. All of a sudden I started, you can make too much money. Then all of a sudden your happiness plateaus. Then you're like Mark Zuckerberg, who last year spent 32 million on private security.
- [03:09]
Tom Bilyeu
Jesus.
- [03:10]
Tai Lopez
That means you have credible threats against your children, kidnapping. You're spending two and a half million a month on security. His happiness has now gone over the cliff. And you can actually be so wealthy, you're back to where you were when you were poor. Rockefeller. There's a book called Titan. He's the richest man in modern times. 600 billion net worth. In the book you can read. In about the 1890s, he reached the pinnacle of his success, but he was attacked by the US government. There was a news reporter, this woman that was the thorn in his flesh, always saying he was a scam and blah, blah, blah. And he lost all his hair in his 50s from stress. All of his hair, his eyebrows, eyelashes, hair. And he, he had a moment of clarity where he said, all of the money I have made has not compensated me for the stress I've gone through, meaning it's too much. So that's my answer on wealth. Find the point which for most people is going to be, you know, six figures of profit, maybe seven figures. When you start going to make eight figures, the banana peel effect. Your best friend's going to try to steal your money. The tax guys come and show up and go, well, did you? Was that a real business expense? So try to find the optimal point on the efficient frontier. Now, you asked about power. My main mentor in the last 10 years has been Dr. David Buss. He's maybe the most respected living evolutionary psychologist. And I have a female. I like to always have one male mentor and one female. And Dr. Helen Fisher, who's also one of the preeminent scientists. I came to them one day and I said, you know, there's four M's of motivation for everybody. I said, what do you think of my theory, Dr. Buss? He said, I think it's a decent theory. He always has his own improvements. But the first M is material things. The second M is mating. The third M is movement, slash, freedom. The fourth M is mastery, slash status. What we get wrong about ourselves and others when it comes to power or wealth is not understanding that almost every Wealthy person that I quiz into their unconscious mind, X ray into the mind. They're not really driven by material things. There's a lot of people who seek money because they like the fourth M. Mastery status or power. So when it comes to men, men are much more driven by power. I'm already seeing the results. First time I launched this quiz, 6,000 people took it the first day in about 190 countries. So I'm getting good data and I'm finding a pattern. I ask at the end, is your sex male or female? I don't get into genders. Sex, okay. I notice a consistent trend. Men care about mastery, status, power. Women do occasionally, but rarely. And that makes sense. Our ancestors, the men. You know, Nietzsche, maybe the second smartest person I've ever read. You know, Nietzsche said the will to power, this is the force that drives Earth. Donald Trump, Joe Biden, they are there because they had the will to power. They were like, I want power. The lobbyists, the pharmaceutical companies, we think they just want wealth. But there's men sitting there that want power more than everything. Very few men, if you give them a choice and say, do you really love money? Like I'm going to give you material things, you get all the jewelry you want, okay, you get all the jewelry, you get all the luxury designer clothing, but you have no power status. Very few men will take that. But if I say to you, look bro, no jewelry, no Rolexes, but you walk in a room and men fear you want to be you. Men, 80% of time take that. So power is a very sex specific thing. Women, or at least the female sex, don't seem as driven by that. But, but to be clear, I find about 20% of women are also driven by status. Now if you hold your hand up, I've never seen your hand. Can I see? Are you right or left? Okay, so this is digit index ratio. Pretty good science. Some scientists disagree with it, but there's about 40 studies. You have a lot of testosterone. You're a very driven, ambitious person. This, you're very similar to me. This is higher. This is prenatal testosterone, androgen kind of receptor. When you're in the womb, you get like this dosage which sets the course of your life. You are probably more driven when you see a hand like this and you, and also you can do other testing to, to find this out. Driven a little bit like Nietzsche. The will to power, the will to be known, the will to be respected. You have a podcast, you're building a personal brand, by the way, there's nothing wrong about it. Sometimes people try to go, no, that's not me. I'm not materialist. I'm more like Einstein. I don't believe that much in free will. You know, if you read the Walter Isaacson book on Einstein, pretty smart guy. He's like, free will doesn't exist. Now, that's. If you're a quantum physicist, you'll probably disagree and say that free will does exist. If you love power, some of it's predestined. You can see it in the womb. And so I think men have to come to grips with their will to power because the will to power also can drive. You can be your demon, you know, it can be your angel sitting here, or it can be your demon. Wealth and power are like a pit bull, and when they're on your side, they're wonderful guardians. But if they ever turn against you, they'll rip you to shreds.
- [08:44]
Tom Bilyeu
That is very succinct. So the thing that I. I agree with all of that, and the thing that I would add is once I came to understand that the true nature of money is to be a facilitator in and of itself, it doesn't do anything. I mean, if you really think about it. And this. The analogy I'm about to make made a lot more sense before crypto. But what I used to tell people is money, cash only has potential heat energy in and of itself. You can burn it, it will release heat. That's really all it has, except for the fact that we all say that thing is valuable. And therefore, as long as we believe in it, then it will carry some further potential in it. But the potential that it has, I think people always think it's going to make them feel about themselves the way they feel about other people that have money. So they look at that person and they admire them. They want to be them. They're driven by envy. I've heard you say that. I think that's pretty accurate. And they think, oh, all this envy that I have for that person, if I get the money, I will feel complete, powerful, amazing. But the reality is, money can't touch how you feel about yourself.
- [09:51]
Tai Lopez
Yeah.
- [09:52]
Tom Bilyeu
And so ultimately, I think the thing that people strive for is to feel a certain way about themselves. Which is why if you say to somebody, you can be feared and admired, I think there's something about that. And there is an element of. I think part of that particular question, the thing that turns them on is, oh, they're going to fear me. Because people instinctively know that they will then be able to wield their power. Because if I were going to define power, I would say it's the ability to manifest your will. And I don't mean manifest in like a woo woo sense. I mean manifest as in you close your eyes, you imagine the world, you want to exist, you open your eyes and you actually go make that world come true. And so the person who that, I mean, maybe Putin is even more so just because he controls a country. But when I look at somebody like Elon Musk and he can seemingly kick off billion dollar companies at will, I mean, it's bananas. And that is somebody who imagines going to Mars and builds the thing necessary to get him there, including the legal battles and things that he's going to have to go through to make it all come true. The just brutality that is something that difficult, that expensive, that high risk. And so, all right, you've got wealth, which is really, it's just a facilitator.
- [11:13]
Tai Lopez
It's.
- [11:13]
Tom Bilyeu
It's not going to touch who you are. But everybody thinks it's going to change how they feel about themselves. Then you have power, which is really about the ability to make things happen in the world.
- [11:25]
Tai Lopez
Right?
- [11:25]
Tom Bilyeu
And on that one, I think people tangle up because everybody, not everybody. It's become so commonplace to be disgusted by somebody like me who says, I'm here seeking power, right? I come seeking power. I am trying to get as powerful as I can. Now, if you think that means I'm trying to hold dominion over other and extract from them so that I can myself have. I get why you would think that's gross. But if you understand power the way that I understand it, which is you. Power is agnostic. I could use it to manifest a
- [11:57]
Tai Lopez
will that is horrible.
- [11:58]
Tom Bilyeu
Hitler enters stage right. Or I could try to make the world a much better place. I can bring things to the world that are wonderful. Gandhi, Mother Teresa. Right. They had a will to power that was extraordinarily strong. It just manifests in a way that we can all get behind versus somebody who's doing horrible things. But if people are able to tease the sort of emotion that they have around what they think money is without ever really thinking about it, or what they think power is without ever really thinking about it from the reality of these evolutionarily granted tools. Like, if they can tease that apart, then they can say, okay, I'm going to bring these things on. I'm not going to pursue wealth for the sake of having money. There are things in my life I Need to facilitate. And money is the great facilitator. Therefore, cool, I'm going to need some amount of money and then, hey, I have a vision for a better world and I want to have impact and so I need to get good at manifesting my will. But I don't think people understand that.
- [13:01]
Tai Lopez
You need to read the Denial of Death, a famous book on this subject. I would just say I agree, but remember the Pitbull analogy. Power, wealth, absolute power, corrupts absolutely. And so the Denial of Death is an interesting book on the subject of what happens when we seek power.
- [13:20]
Tom Bilyeu
So you recommend I read that as a warning?
- [13:24]
Tai Lopez
Not a warning, but a deep dive into the repercussions. One of my things, my mentor Joel Salatin used to say, the worst thing in life, Ty, is to grow old and realize you got good at the wrong thing. So I'm a big fan of what's the go deep and what's the unconscious motivators that everything that we think, we perceive, we want power and we want money is the conscious mind. But like Freud said, by the way, much of what you said was Freudian and Nietzschean, you know, but the mind is like a iceberg, 10% above water, 90% sitting below. So I would say you have probably the way I would see you, if I might be so bold, please, in the unconscious mind is you have a genetic predisposition towards mastery and status. Your mind, your conscious mind. You brought this up. We justify to ourselves. This is kind of the concept, you know, the kind of outdated Freudian concept of the ego, the soup. You know, you had the ego and you kind of have this super ego, which is like collective society. But the simpler way to think about it is our genes make us want something unconsciously and then our mind justifies it. Everybody justifies Muammar Gaddafi, you know, Kim Jong Un. He does not see himself as a bad man. He sees him. Adolf Hitler. There's a very famous story about Adolf Hitler. He kept a picture of a guy behind him and this was an English soldier. In World War I there was a battle, I think it's called Ypres is how you pronounce it, in Belgium, a young Adolf Hitler, unknown to the world, foot soldier, comes out of a tent or a little hut. No gun. He comes out with no gun. An English soldier has a rifle and Adolf Hitler, young Adolf Hitler, says, don't shoot me, I'm unarmed. And the man said, for a split second I thought, I'm going to kill him anyway, he's the enemy. But he said, I Didn't like the morality of killing an unarmed man. I let him go. That was Adolf Hitler. That man felt guilty on that. That was 1917. 1617. About 1939. Okay. Guess what happens. That man feels guilty every day. Adolf Hitler keeps that man's picture. Calls him on his birthday annually. No joke. Thanks. The man and Hitler perceived that in the conscious mind is proof that God was on his side. He had a vision for changing his people. It was the time when people were more nationalistic. All countries were nationalistic for the most part. So Adolf Hitler had this. He used his. He had a genetic predisposition. He had a horrible family upbringing. He had a dad who was abused him physically. High levels of narcissism. If you read. There's a new book about the family of Adolf Hitler. I just read it about two months ago. You know his dad, if you know how to read people. His dad had npd. Narcissistic Personality Disorder. We now know under FMRI machines you're missing gray matter in your brain. So you don't even know you're a narcissist. His dad's a hyper narcissist. Has all the attributes of it. Adolf Hitler we know now narcissism is like 0.78 heredit heritability. It's insane. So we think so. I told you, I don't believe in free will. Adolf Hitler is born. This man who is the product of a narcissist. He then goes through wars put on by big governments which cause PTSD for people. He comes out of this already with a genetic predisposition to be a little bit wacky. On top of that, he sits through World War I, probably has literal artillery reverberations like causes mental illness. But he never saw himself that way. He saw himself as a God warrior and he had proof. If he was on the show, Adolf Hitler would have said, what do you mean, I could have been shot? The Englishman, the hand of God, came down and said, I have a special purpose for this man. So you have to. We always have to. I have to be careful that I'm not justifying my proclivities, my genetic predispositions, and saying, by golly, this is the right way. Now, I'm not. I'm not saying your way is wrong. I'm just saying I try to think 360 about myself. Adolf Hitler was wrong. He was a madman and he. His will to power was a complete lose. Lose. He lost his life. Germany lost. My grandma's from Germany. My grandma met Adolf Hitler in 1936 at a park. Her sister, I mean her best friend, Melina Meshman, who wrote a New York Times best selling book, you can read and is dedicated to my grandma in the forward asking my grandma for forgiveness because Melita Meshman turned my grandma's family in and the SS kicked down the door. My grandma always told me she remembers it before she came here to California. She escaped. My grandma knew he was a madman in 1936. My grandma was good at reading people. He came in a park. Melita Meshman that were both about. This was in 1936. This is when Time magazine, the mass media was stupid back then they made, you know, Adolf Hitler was the man of the year on the COVID of Time magazine. I think it was 1936. So my grandma was born in 18. So she's 18 years old. Melina Meshman says, marianne, there's an amazing man you need to meet. He's giving a small talk in our local park. My grandma goes there, she says, a car pulls up, there's 50 people, 100 people. There's. There's no top on the car. You know, it's convertible Mercedes. A lot of billionaires made in the Nazi regime in war. And he starts yelling. My grandma's like, I hated the guy right away. My grandma didn't like people who yelled, will to power genes. We think we have free will. Did Adolf Hitler have free will? Einstein said, no. Now when I say this on social media every Tom, Dick and Harry writes, todd, you don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm supposed to believe you over Einstein? I'm like, believe it or not, Einstein was a fairly smart guy. Now there's newer physicists that disagree. Quantum physics kind of shows that things can appear out of nowhere, which is closer to our conception of morality, that people make a choice. But there's still a lot of machines that we literally have that show. Before you take an action, it appeared in your mind, in the unconscious, 10 seconds before or 10th of a second before, meaning what you perceive your conscious mind to say to do. Your unconscious told you to do it. We're the bitch of our brain. So going back to you, this is a long winded. Some people say I yap, but hey, I'm a professional yapper. You might be listening every once in a while in a yapping session, there's something to take away.
- [20:19]
Grainger Narrator
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [20:51]
Tai Lopez
I think you are and me and everybody in this room, we suffer from something called FDS frequency dependent selection. Nature says I like to diversify in every country in the world. Women, when they give birth, about 50% male sex, 50% female. Sexual. There's a value in sexual reproduction. That's why there's two sexes. Some species don't do it. Ferns don't do it. Lesser evolved species, ferns, earthworms, they don't have male female sex. But it's a diversification in a community like in this room. I know in this room, not everybody sees the world like you. You're more of a will to power. About 25% of the world, especially men, was distributed the genes to seek mastery, status, power. But nature or God is smart. If there's too many people, and I'm more like you, if there's too many people like us, can you have all leaders with no followers? You must have people who follow. You can't have only architects for a beautiful house like you live in. You need somebody to be able to build the house. So nature FDS frequency dependent selection says. All right, we got enough of those guys. Let's present. 25% of population is driven by mating. I just did a did a seminar with women CEOs. It was amazing. Women sometimes score as their unconscious motivators. 95% mating. Some men do too. There was. So nature goes, I want some people who care about love and family, but I don't want them all because I need a few Genghis Khans. I need a few. I need. Sometimes population gets too big. I need the scourge of God that comes through and modulates a population so they don't overeat. Nature has been doing that for a long time. Attila, the Huns, Stalin's, Putin. I'm not justifying what they do. I'm just recording history. This is the known history of man. Nature says I want about 25% of people who actually like material things. There are people who get tremendous pleasure from holding a stack of cash. It's not me and you. Do you keep a lot of cash in your wallet? Nope. Yeah, I have a cousin, he is of that fds. Nature said, I'M going to give you the genes. He likes physical things. You know who those people become? Those people become sometimes are great artists because artists is holding a thing like a sculptor. They like the thing. Michelangelo was probably a thing driven person. He says I saw in the sculpture. He said I saw on the rock the treasure. He could see. That's a material driven person. Me and you, I don't care. Like if if I didn't wasn't on camera, I don't know what I'd be wearing right now. Everywhere. Wearing a tank top. I'm not. When I did my here in my garage video, people didn't believe me when I said here in my garage. But here's my new Lambo. But you know what I like more than material things? Knowledge. Because I am a movement freedom person. So you. It'd be interesting. I haven't quizzed you, but you may be. Let me ask you this. You got a choice. I wire you a billion dollars. Okay, you're already rich, but let's say I wire you 100 bill. Okay. Cash, no after tax. But you must be celibate. No love, no romance for the next 10 years. And your wife, you got a great wife. I was just talking to her. You guys got to live apart for 10 years. You just a solo man or you have a massive love and you got a million bucks is all you'll ever have in your bank account. Which one are you taking?
- [24:31]
Tom Bilyeu
Million bucks. Very easy.
- [24:32]
Tai Lopez
Okay, next. So that's mating higher than material. Okay, next. You can have the love. This million bucks in your bank account at all times. Not extraordinary wealth, but wealth, no freedom. You will have to go no further than one mile from this house. People can come to you. No freedom. And you must work on a 9 to 5 schedule. Normal 9 to 5 Monday. Even if you work for yourself Monday to Friday. Okay, so you get the love, no freedom. Or you get the freedom, but your wife got to be a part. No sex for 10 years. Which one you take? I like this.
- [25:17]
Tom Bilyeu
I would really need to understand the. I mean the. The reality is I would trade nothing for my wife. So if we had to be apart for 10 years, basically you could do anything but rob me of my health. And I'm always going to choose my wife. But that's my wife versus if I were single. I would say.
- [25:32]
Tai Lopez
Let's say the first month you met her.
- [25:34]
Tom Bilyeu
First month I met her. I was not in love yet, so.
- [25:36]
Tai Lopez
But no women, no sex. Ten years.
- [25:39]
Tom Bilyeu
That would.
- [25:39]
Tai Lopez
Are you taking the freedom?
- [25:42]
Tom Bilyeu
That would be. That would be What? I would advise myself. Unless I don't know.
- [25:45]
Tai Lopez
But I care about the unconscious. Where are you going?
- [25:49]
Tom Bilyeu
What would I have done back then?
- [25:52]
Tai Lopez
Even now, fast forward. Pretend you had been single all these years. You just met your wife. You're getting along three months, but you have to break it off. And you have ultimate freedom. You do what you want. No schedule, you travel, you got a little bit of money, not much.
- [26:03]
Tom Bilyeu
But life has nothing better to offer you than love. So I'll take love.
- [26:07]
Tai Lopez
Okay, love last. You keep the love. But you're an unknown soul. You wield no power. You knew well, no respect. You have no real impact on the world. You might have it on your mom, dad, you know, friends, you're anonymous. But you got love. Or you have the ultimate will to power. You are both loved and feared. As Conan the Barbarian would say, her king is gone. The thoughts in your mind become real and you change the world. But you are celibate for the next 10 years. Assuming you had just met your wife now. Which one?
- [26:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I mean, assuming that I had just met my wife, I would and didn't know. You have to kill my now understanding that life has nothing better to offer you than love. So now from this perspective, for sure, the love. Okay, but at the time, in no way, shape or form would I have chosen anything other than being able to build and create the things I wanted to build and create. For sure.
- [27:07]
Tai Lopez
That's what I thought. Because notice the way you speak of the world and the conscious. You just gave me a long talk before I gave my long talk about how you can change the world with power and money gives you more mastery. You don't want the material things you just. What we just talked about just unfolded. I would say you're primarily environmentally, you've now become mating driven. You were born mastery and status and you taught yourself to be wiser. Okay, very few people do that. You're more advanced than the average person. But these are very strong impulses. And this one's so strong that if I talk to your wife, she's not here. One day we'll have to have a round table with her there. You probably naturally continually pull this way. There's probably a tension in your marriage that. And sometimes she has to check and say no, love is more important. You're. You're trying to influence too much the world.
- [28:01]
Tom Bilyeu
She wouldn't say it in. In that term, but you're 100% correct. So I. In my marriage. Because we agree that our marriage is our highest priority. Yes, because there's nothing I value more than what my relationship has given me. Not success, not adoration. Literally all of that pales in comparison to truly being seen and loved and building something together and sharing a life just really is. If you're wired like me, it is the peak of what life has to offer you. And it's extraordinary. And I could never have imagined something so wonderful. However, that doesn't stop me from having this incredible drive to want to have impact. I mean, obviously it's called impact theory for a reason. So that really, really matters to me and being able to balance the two. And this is, I think, the core of my thesis. Because all I'm saying is I want people to understand what money and power actually are. Because once you know that that thing in your hand is a sword and not a hammer.
- [29:03]
Tai Lopez
Yeah.
- [29:03]
Tom Bilyeu
But that a hammer exists, then when you need a hammer, go get a hammer. When you need a sword, go get the sword. And I think people are really delusional about what they are because from the outside, the only way to map the territories with your emotion about how you feel about people that have that thing. And so it gives myself, very much included, a warped sense of what it is. So for the first decade of my entrepreneurial career, I was just chasing money, and it made me profoundly unhappy. Now, had I not gone down that road of chasing money, getting money, and still being unhappy, then I never would have realized, oh, wait, this isn't the game.
- [29:40]
Tai Lopez
So to your point, you trace mastery from day one. That's what I would have told you.
- [29:46]
Tom Bilyeu
You, I would have told you to be.
- [29:48]
Tai Lopez
I would have told you to be like a Tony Robbins. I would have told you to be a leader of men. That's fine.
- [29:55]
Tom Bilyeu
Look, man, it's just what's interesting, the
- [29:57]
Tai Lopez
ultimate scam in this world is I literally am one of the only people talking about this. All those a million therapists. What the are therapists and psychologists doing? Sometimes people, when I do a talk like this, they go, ty, are you a. You're speaking on health? Are you a doctor? Are you. You're speaking on psychology. Are you a psychologist? Are you. You know, you're speaking on business. Do you have a Harvard mba? I go, have you noticed Doctors have failed us. Nobody's healthy in America. Almost nobody. Everybody's unhappy. Psychologists have failed us. Have you noticed that most people are poor? Economists and business teachers have failed us. So I've gone on my own. And it's a tragedy that I have to do this, but I do this with opportunity. I make my Mess. My message. You and I are the victim of a time in history. The rise. There's three trends. I just wrote a new book. The three trends. Trend number one is the rise and fall of governments. It's still per. It still corrupts us. Now, we went through government schools, you know, we went. Did you go to college?
- [31:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [31:02]
Tai Lopez
Okay. I dropped out. You know that they charge you 80 to 200,000 of debt to go to college and university and they never take you. They never have you take a quiz or do anything. Career counseling. They don't do. They don't help. You know, the unconscious mind. It would have been better for you to seek mastery first. And the good news is you've come full circle, like a boomerang. You're back to it. I could have predicted that 10 years ago. No matter what, you'll come back to the will to power. What were your mom and dad like?
- [31:34]
Tom Bilyeu
He probably has to ask me questions to get an answer. My mom is.
- [31:37]
Tai Lopez
Who was sure they're right?
- [31:39]
Tom Bilyeu
More neither of them. No to their detriment.
- [31:43]
Tai Lopez
Who overthought things?
- [31:44]
Tom Bilyeu
My mom.
- [31:46]
Tai Lopez
How would you describe your dad? Very.
- [31:53]
Tom Bilyeu
He doesn't know how to manifest his will. He feels like you make the best out of life. He's. He had a thing on his desk that I remember to this day in his office that said, the beatings will continue until the morale improves. And I remember when I first saw it, I found that absolutely hysterical. And then as I've gotten older, I realized, oh, my God. My dad believed himself to be a cog in the machine and his only outlet was acerbic humor.
- [32:22]
Tai Lopez
But are you sure your dad didn't have a will to power? But at the time in history, men were emasculated. And there wasn't social media, there wasn't the ability to start your own business. Are you sure your dad didn't have the will to power?
- [32:35]
Tom Bilyeu
I think everybody has the will to power.
- [32:37]
Tai Lopez
Many people I don't.
- [32:38]
Tom Bilyeu
So you don't see it as a spectrum. You see it as a binary.
- [32:41]
Tai Lopez
Oh, no, no. For sure there's a spectrum. But at some point, on a 1 to 100 scale, my dad's low.
- [32:46]
Tom Bilyeu
Very low.
- [32:47]
Tai Lopez
I'd like to meet your dad.
- [32:48]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I'm guessing. Yeah, I'm guessing you take that because genetics play a big role in your worldview.
- [32:54]
Tai Lopez
No, no. Because he was conscious of the fact. He was making jokes. There's an ancient proverb. Much truth is said in jest. Your dad would what? We make jokes about what we self deprecate. Is often our unconscious mind that we're not powerful enough to do so many men. I saw this the second I put a Lamborghini video out. All the virtue signaler men said I don't care about Lamborghinis. Who's this douchebag? Those guys specifically commenting. They were the ones who wanted the Lambo but they couldn't get it. So they. How do you. It's called pain avoiding delusion. You see it ultimately sometimes people have full psychotic breaks with reality. But how do we cope with the pain of this world? We pretend we don't want that thing. But the fact that your dad had a joke on his desk means it was. It was coming bubbling to the top.
- [33:51]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. So I. I think everybody has the will to power for sure. Now you may think they do. Okay, so just a second ago I asked you, is this on a spectrum? Yes. No. Or is it binary? Because if it's on a spectrum, then I will give you. Some people are going to be way lower on the spectrum. I'll even give you that it probably breaks way more. Men are way more will to power than women. All of that makes sense anecdotally with what I see out in the world. But. And look, I have not sat down and like broken down my dad. But experientially I will say that my dad is so content in his life now outside of he's no longer working, he's retired and he loves his life now. His life is the classic puttering around the house.
- [34:33]
Tai Lopez
What did he do?
- [34:34]
Tom Bilyeu
He was a purchasing manager.
- [34:37]
Tai Lopez
What about your grandparents?
- [34:38]
Tom Bilyeu
Now? My grandfather on his side, he died when my dad was six months old, so I never met him. But from just what he did in life was very high on the will to power.
- [34:48]
Tai Lopez
Which is what.
- [34:49]
Tom Bilyeu
He was an inventor and he had some patents and ended up getting in a scandalous relationship with my grandmother who was 44 years younger than him at a time where that was like clutch the perfect.
- [35:04]
Tai Lopez
Her dad was DiCaprio.
- [35:06]
Tom Bilyeu
I. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. My grandfather.
- [35:08]
Tai Lopez
Yeah, sorry, your grandfather dicapri Bill you.
- [35:11]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes, exactly. So he ended up having to sell all his patents and move to a small town, which is why by the time I got to my dad, there was no money and he grew up without a dad.
- [35:20]
Tai Lopez
But that's also mating driven terms.
- [35:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Uh, yes. And I don't know him, so I literally have no idea.
- [35:26]
Tai Lopez
I tell people, go deep into your genes. You're 25%. Is it people parents are 50% related to you, grandparents are 25.
- [35:33]
Tom Bilyeu
You tell people that because you want them to understand them. Yes, it's interesting. So you and I, I agree, that's super powerful. You need to understand yourself. Amazing. But I am fatalistic when it comes to genes. So I'm just like, look, you're, you are. 50% of you, roughly, is hardwired. You're not going to be able to change it. So understanding it, very useful. But the 50% of you, that's malleable is where I focus. So if you and I were being interviewed separately, you would tell a tale of, know your genetics, understand how this all plays out. Don't fight. In fact, one of the quotes that I pulled from you was, it's something like, here it is. Biology is God and society is man made. And you are basically saying, don't fight the Fed, don't fight biology. Like you are a slave to your genes. Now that gives me hives. I agree with you. It isn't that I don't like it. So here, in fact, everybody says that if you are not religious, you do have a God. I have a God. And that God is effectiveness. I am obsessed with effectiveness. Now all of that for me is predicated on, I believe that your goal ought to be honorable so that you don't end up with a Hitler who's very effective at killing people. That is not interesting to me. I don't celebrate that. But if you're trying to build something honorable, now I'm like, hey, motherfucker, if you are not paying attention to what works and what does not work, you are making a huge mistake. So I get it. There's some amount of me that is absolutely hardwired and there's nothing I'm going to be able to do to stop it.
- [37:04]
Tai Lopez
Cool.
- [37:05]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm not going to fight that because I think you're right. But I am going to spend an inordinate amount of time focused on the part of me that can change. And now if you understand you are both things you can't change. And so you better understand them and be able to contend with them and do not become their slave. This is why I tell people to become. You must get emotional control because evolution is with you. But over here, there are things that you can change. And just all of my thinking, everything that I do is optimized for the part I can change. So I don't disagree with anything that you're saying. I just, I. What I'm trying to get people to focus on is please don't think you're a blank slate, which is I think a big part of where you're coming from, the, the just madness that I'm watching unfold with what's happening in society when we're no longer being chased by a lion. And so people can indulge any intellectual fantasy that's totally detached from what's affected.
- [37:57]
Tai Lopez
You know, who predicted this, by the way?
- [37:59]
Tom Bilyeu
Nietzsche for sure.
- [38:00]
Tai Lopez
Marks. So I'm not a communist. In fact, this weekend I'm going on a debate where I'm the capitalist predict. Exactly. He basically predicted, if you create too much wealth and ease, people go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. That was one of his against capitalism. He's like, communists, we're all going to stay farmers now. Communism failed in his conception, but he was right about that thing. I give a man credit now when you. It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs at the bottom. When we're all kind of farmers, like the amish, they have 500 less depression than modern society because everybody's like, I gotta milk the cow. And you just stay. You don't try to think you're more important. But as we move up Maslow's hierarchy of need, the top is individual expression. So I saw, I saw an art exposition in New York City where somebody was. There was a group watching them, and the art was. He was using his body as a cheese grater and somebody was lifting him up and down and he was grating cheese. And people were like, wow, this is magnificent art. And I was thinking, Karl Marx was right. This guy's insane. He needs a farm. He needs. This guy needs to be milking a cow or cutting down a tree for firewood. I agree with you all that, by the way, on. On genetics, it's domain specific. IQ is like, mostly IQ. Height, eye color, skin color is like 80 plus percent heritable. Some things aren't heritable at all. If we all are in a car crash at 100 miles an hour, there's no heritage. You can't have inherited a gene to withstand that if you don't have a seatbelt on. So there's. You always got to think about there's things you can change. You know that there's an AA Alcoholics Anonymous prayer, I don't remember. It's the serenity prayer. It's like, you know, God, give me the strength to change the things that I can change and the. Whatever serenity to accept the things here.
- [39:52]
Tom Bilyeu
God, grant me the serenity to accept change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom.
- [39:57]
Tai Lopez
The wisdom to know the difference that's kind of a woo woo way of. What we know scientifically is there's some. You can't. But. But my thing about going to your ancestors. We don't have to talk about this forever.
- [40:08]
Tom Bilyeu
This is a.
- [40:09]
Tai Lopez
We need to do a psychology talk at one point. But the re. Everybody's lost in this world. I rarely find somebody who's on the right path. Now, a simple thing.
- [40:20]
Tom Bilyeu
Can you define the right path?
- [40:21]
Tai Lopez
First, know thyself. First piece of self help in modern world. The Oracle of Delphi. You go to Greece, there was a. There was a cave and they wrote on the wall the best advice that mankind had at up to that point. And the first piece of advice was know thyself. But back then they didn't understand what Nietzsche said. The mind's an impenetrable fortress. You only learn about yourself through friends and enemies. That's why you know the best advice, practical advice you can have on what career to take, what enemies compliment you on. Because an enemy never gives you a false compliment. So I have people who love my brand. People would die for me. Literally. I had somebody hack me the other day, and a random guy wrote me on WhatsApp. Don't know how he got my number. He's like, I hacked the hacker. And I was like, who are you? He's like, dude, you've saved my life. You'll never know. You never have to know. I am. You've made me millions of dollars. Fuck that guy. I destroyed him. So a bigger hacker attacked some random hacker. Some people love me. And I have people who I. I'm a. I'm a force. I split people down the middle. And the people who don't like me, I still listen to their complex. Like that guy, he's just a good marketer, but he doesn't know what he's talking about. Then I become a marketer. That guy, I don't agree with anything he said on that podcast. He's damn entertaining to listen to. Then I become an entertainer. So for go back, my mom, who's sitting right there, My mom used to. Even your own parents will give you compliments when they're maddest at you. T. I'm so. I'm so mad at you. She. My mom says you're a bulldog when you believe it's something you won't stop. Well, that's my strength too. When I build a business, you know, if it. If it's failing, I'll stick with it till I rebuild it. So know thyself. Listen to the Compliments of thine enemies. That's one. I used to say you do this thing called. I call it Eulerian destiny. Like geometry. You take four circles where they all connect. What you should do with life. So number one is the compliment of enemies or the compliments. The compliments of your mom when she's mad at you. Also count. The other circle is thine ancestors. When we say know ourself, what is our self? We are the dn. DNA is some scientists think the most magical thing on Earth. Einstein said the most magical thing on earth was compound interest other smart people, and I agree with them, said the most profound thing they haven't figured out is what is DNA? Where did it come from? Did alien seed the planet? We don't understand. It's the closest thing to having been immortal. So when I say I'm Tai Lopez, am I Tai Lopez or am I my mom, Andrea, and my dad, Ernesto, and his father. And so know thine ancestors, because in ancestors, you will find the clues to your strengths and weaknesses. And so in my ancestors, what are strengths? I mean, one of my. My great grandfather was a great. Well, I have many great scientists in my family. Martin Birkenrode, my mom's dad, was a. Is a famous scientist. He was a child prodigy and taught at Yale before he had an undergrad degree. So teaching now. What's the weaknesses? There's much mental illness in my family. My dad had npd, Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Probably a level of psychopathy, too. He ended up in prison. You can see the prison from here. Long Beach, Terminal Island. So he had a temper. My dad will kill you no problem. You know, everybody has this thing about. I grew up talking back to my parents. I didn't grow up with my dad all the time. But ain't nobody ever talked back to my dude come out of prison. My dad was a og. He's blind in one eye, like knife wounds and all this stuff from Harlem. But that's a weakness you have to control. I have to control rage and anger. So the second circle you draw, you got your complements of enemies, and you draw your ancestors and make sure you at least. I like to go back to great grandparents. Great grandparents have 12 and a half percent. So you have eight grandparents, great grandparents, that's eight and a half percent. They're as related to you as your two damn parents who are 50%. Your parents are just a more concentrated version of that. Okay, so then the third one is what you talk about consciously on a Saturday night when you're not working. I talk a lot about psychology when I'm not working. Does it make sense for that? I became a marketer. It became sense that I became an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship, you make money when you know people. Isn't it ironic that the man consistently the richest in the last 10 years is, you know, some of them, Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg. These people did a lot of psychology courses too. Psychology make you wealthy. Elon Musk, the best applied psychologist on this earth. Oh, he read. I watch him. Effective altruism manipulate the soul of mankind and hopefully, like you said, for the will to power, it's for good. But don't ever think he's not a master puppet man who's now. He bought Twitter, so He now has 5% of the globe. Check his app and he can weave the web. He's the spider man, not the Batman. So you need to. What do you talk about on a Saturday night? That's the third circle and the fourth circle. What you been doing? Because there's a lot of clues on what have you been doing? What were you doing before Impact Theory?
- [45:46]
Tom Bilyeu
Quest. Well, before Quest, it was a software company. None of those things will get you where you want to go.
- [45:52]
Tai Lopez
But what before that, what are we doing at 14?
- [45:55]
Tom Bilyeu
Filmmaking.
- [45:56]
Tai Lopez
Filmmaking, yeah, yeah. Mastery status. To be known to be. It is. It's an expression.
- [46:03]
Tom Bilyeu
Well, so ironically, yes. I didn't think of it that way, so never do. I'll. I'll explain it how I thought of it, and then you can help me go a layer deeper. So the way that I understood myself at that time was I have. I clearly have a much bigger emotional reaction to film than other people. I'm more drawn in. I have a stronger emotional reaction. I remember them longer. They really began to shape my sense of the world. So, for instance, the Matrix to me is a perfect metaphor for the human condition. So when I saw that movie, it actually gave me a framework with which to think. And so I often tell people I think in movies. So there's a whole series of thinking things where I'm a hyper responder to that art form. But I also, at 14, was a hyper responder to poetry. So I remember one day going, okay, do we become a poet or do we become a filmmaker? And the reason I became the filmmaker. You're going to love this is because there was no money in poetry and I could get rich in film. Because this is like the 80s, early 90s, when Hollywood is still popping off.
- [47:15]
Tai Lopez
When Hollywood had status.
- [47:16]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes. Oh, for sure.
- [47:18]
Tai Lopez
You're a stat you're not a money guy, I don't think. You don't have jewelry. You're dressed nonchalant. You're a status, but mating is there. So it's like, like, like you said, it's like, I want to be a poet. What do poets do well with all. If you're an ugly dude, become a poet. Poets do well with women, my friend.
- [47:35]
Tom Bilyeu
Man, you know some poets.
- [47:36]
Tai Lopez
I don't know Pablo Neruda. I mean, you read Pablo Neruda to a woman. All wordsmithing. I mean, yeah, not all poets, but many. Well, what do you think Drake is? What do you think? What do you think?
- [47:47]
Tom Bilyeu
I think Drake is a pop star. I do not think he's a poet. Now. He is wordplay. Yeah, but he uses ghost writers. And so I've heard. I am not a Drake scholar, but yeah, that's interesting because going back to your earlier point, he's somebody that can control culture. Now people that understand people like you, they understand the cultural movements.
- [48:06]
Tai Lopez
Mating, mastery.
- [48:08]
Tom Bilyeu
It's very possible that would have been a good.
- [48:11]
Tai Lopez
That's. You're in your thing. You did it. You did it. Life came full circle. You tried to move away from your Eulerian destiny.
- [48:17]
Tom Bilyeu
And oh, I did not try every life because. So here's the tale. It's funny, we were just talking about this before I started rolling. People do not know me for the thing that I consider myself. I consider myself an artist. I am obsessed with storytelling, video games, filmmaking, comic books. Like, that's. That is my life. It has been my life since I was 12 years old. From the time I was 12, I knew that I was going to be a storyteller.
- [48:40]
Tai Lopez
Yes.
- [48:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Now the bad news is that graduating in the late 90s from film school, I did not know how to break into the industry. YouTube doesn't exist. There's no cell phone with a camera. A no budget film is a hundred thousand dollars. I'd never met anybody with that kind of money. So end up teaching film. Meet these two very successful guys. They're like, look, you're coming to the world with your hand out. And if you want to be a filmmaker, you're gonna have to control the resources. And so I was like, okay, word. I need to get rich. I'll go into business. I thought it would take 18 months. It took 15 years, but it worked. So all of the, like chasing money and all of that was just so that I could do what I'm finally doing now. Now, if I were to recommend to somebody a strategy, this would not be the one.
- [49:17]
Tai Lopez
Right. Go trade what you want.
- [49:19]
Tom Bilyeu
Correct geometry back to my God, which is effectiveness.
- [49:22]
Tai Lopez
You needed my Eulerian destiny. This talk I did. I needed it too.
- [49:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Where were you 25 years ago?
- [49:28]
Tai Lopez
I needed it. You know why I became what I am. When I was 19, I went to a talk. One of the first millionaires I knew was a guy named Alan Nation. He spoke in a little town in Virginia. And I came up and I had questions. What do I do? And what are. And I said, nobody seems to have the answer. I said, nobody seems to have the answer. And he said, that means you have to become that person. And so I spent my life becoming the person that could give me the answers that I couldn't find from the world. At 19, I found my destiny too. You found yours. That's why I said nature laughs last. Or you ever heard of the movie Of Mice and Men?
- [50:09]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes, of course.
- [50:09]
Tai Lopez
Famous movie.
- [50:10]
Tom Bilyeu
Yep. Famous book.
- [50:11]
Tai Lopez
Famous book. Well, the full poem goes something like, the best laid plans of mice and men go awry. It's like we have our conceptions, but in the end, God laughs last and says, in my frequency dependent selection, I need you to be this. You will be this. And some people become it, which is you. You won. And some people don't. I think that's your dad. But your dad won through you. Your dad. It would have been very interesting. You should ask your dad what did he want to do at 14, your dad. You might be the winner. Your dad. You know what? I bet you it is. I'll tell you something interesting that people don't talk enough about. That's crazy, mind blowing to me. We can read people in many ways. You know, my cockiest thing about myself is I will put a million dollars down and go head to head at anybody at cold reading People. I think I'm the best person at reading people. And I don't even think the second best is 50% as good as me. And I will put money and I will swipe money. Anybody want to go to Vegas and lose their money, put a million bucks down. We'll go cold read a long street of people. Now that's my narcissistic side coming out. Okay, I have acknowledgment of this, but you're allowed to be narcissistic in one thing. And people will give you that. If you start getting too narcissistic, people get mad. But Jung, you should listen to Jung on YouTube. YouTube is a gift to mankind. Before he died, somebody somehow. Interviewer interviewed Carl Jung. The disciple of Freud, one of the greatest men to ever live. And there's a quote I keep on my phone. This is if you ever want to write a quote down and get a tattoo, write this quote down. He wrote a textbook, by the way. The concept of introvert extrovert was invented by Jung. He invented the worm. He also invented the word psyche that we use now or sorry Persona. So listen to this. This is a mind blowing. He wrote a book called Psychological Types. In respect of one's own personality, one's judgment is as a rule extraordinarily clouded. So I meet people, one of the ways I read people is I'm like tell me what you think of yourself. And then I'm like okay, that's what they're not. So I've cut out 50% of the thing. Your dad self conception. He's probably opposite and. But he remember what Thoreau said. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What's called resignation is confirmed desperation. Your dad eventually resigned himself and he's like I. He was stuck and he was, he was stuck in a matrix in time where you. It was very hard to be an entrepreneur. When Jeff Bezos started in 94, he had to borrow from his parents about $250,000 to put a website up. That was the rise of corporates. It just. There's three trends every man and woman needs to know to create wealth. The first trend in modern civilization was the rise and fall of governments. There was a time where government cared about you. There was a time when the US in the 1800s there was less than 1% income tax. The government wasn't out to exploit you. There was a time when there were men like Abraham Lincoln who was no saint, but he wasn't there trying to get rich. He wasn't going to retire from the presidency and make a million dollars with a Netflix thing or a book special. I forgot one of the Recent presidents make 100 Obama has $100 million book deal. After there was no opportunity, Abraham Lincoln died. So did jfk. So there was a time when governments were there for you. They weren't overreaching. There wasn't much taxation, they weren't printing too much money. So there wasn't much inflation and there weren't so much corruption. You know that Abraham Lincoln, every single day, I think Monday through Friday he had the White House open. You could walk in and talk to the President. They had a line in the 1800s you could talk to them. They were accessible. That has fallen. What we've seen through recent events, Covid and other events, government is not only not nobody's waking up thinking about you, but they're probably there to fuck you. Elizabeth Warren passes a law that allows her to continue to trade stocks. So she makes hundreds of millions of dollars. Maybe on inside information, nobody knows. I don't know, but I've heard people say it. Abraham Lincoln was in trading stocks. From his position, he died. He died because he was an accessible person. And Mad men came in. So it was a rise and fall governments then. What was next? The rise and fall of trend two was the rise and fall of corporations. And your dad was a victim of that. See, starting, let's say 1920s, you had the rise of corporations. You had Coca Cola, you had IBM. They were nameless, faceless corporations. People got trapped in the nine to five. That's the Matrix. Your dad probably had an eye. He was a purchasing agent. He was stuck in that thing. You could not start a business on your own if your parents weren't rich. Like even in 94, to put a website up, cost in that time was $200,000. Inflation adjust that cost a million bucks. Now you go to Shopify or WordPress, you put a website up for $0. So 2020, you know, the rise and fall of governments being useful to you. You had the rise and fall of corporations. You know, corporations used to be loyal to you. You had a job in the 1950s, you got a pension, you retired at 60. They didn't fire you. That's all gone now. The rise and fall of corporations. They'll fuck you, not help you. So what's left? The rise of the individual and your early trend catcher. And I'm an early trend catcher, but it just started really in 2020. And so what you were able to do that your dad could not do because he was stuck in that. I call it not the Matrix. I call it the machine. It was still the corporate machine. He didn't have the opportunity to express his will to power. But the good news is he lives on through you. And you did it because there's now tools for the individual to win before to do a show like this. I remember in my time to buy TV space because there was no Internet, you had to have a million up front to run commercials. I remember reaching out from Raleigh, North Carolina. I want to run a nationwide commercial. And the guy selling TV ad said, yeah, it'll be a million bucks. I'm like, what? But now the rise of individual, you can start a Facebook ad for five bucks. So we live in better times. And so everybody has to catch the rise of the individual. As I told you, it used to be the government would give you good health advice. Now the government has lied to everybody about health. And it's been that way in the 50s. They were wrong. And they said you should eat margarine, not butter. You shouldn't give your babies breast milk. You should give them formula. So now you become an individual. You figure out your own. You used to be stuck in a classroom that taught you nothing. Now it's the rise of individual. Educate thyself. You in a small community, you build a tribe now you and a tribe. And so it's good times, man, good times. Everything's good. To quote the famous comedian, what's his name that got canceled, but now is back. Everything's amazing and everybody's anxious. Everything's amazing. Build a website for $0 you could self educate yourself. You could go to a gym. I think most gyms have an eight dollar a month thing. People don't even know about gyms 100 years ago. Now you can get in shape. Reverse reverse aging with, you know, weights. Reverse aging. So everything's amazing. But as Karl Marx said, we're too high up the Maslow hierarchy of needs. That's why I tell people, you know what you do. Here's a hack. I have never told people this on a podcast, but I'll tell you, Tom, what you do is you have the wealth of the top of the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But you take the cautionary tale from Karl Marx and you live closer to the bottom of hierarchy of need. That's why I spend half my time on a farm now. A little log cabin I can have. Big mansion. I've lived in a big mansion. 17 bedrooms, 18 bathrooms. You know, I got a little log house built by the Amish. Keep yourself grounded or you will go kooky. And we live in a society where people are never be stuck with one species. People are stuck in cities with one species. Yeah, they got the little poodle dogs, which most people don't even like their dogs because they keep their dogs trapped in a little apartment. Dogs want to be free, but whatever. I'm not insulting anybody. But if you really cared about the dog, no dog is happy or in a city. I know it's a necessary evil, but get away. Find a little piece of land. 90% of the world lives urban now. That means there's going to be 90% insanity in this world. You got to get to the bottom of where you're just having. I told your wife this before. I was like, you guys should buy a little farm. She's like, I'm a city person. I'm like, but for your sanity, for your sanity, don't spend all the time in the city. Rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Everybody says men talk about the Roman Empire. Why? Years ago, I read Gibbons, you know, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. He said it was. It became too urban. Too many lawsuits, too much corruption of politicians. They used to say, we got to go back to our old Roman ways when we lived on the farm and out in nature, you know, and so many empires have fallen when they become too urban. So the Greek Empire, city states, all this is a problem. Get back out. Native Americans were happy, and the Amish are the closest things to Native Americans, and they are the happiest people, man. It's crazy.
- [59:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, we're gonna have to clash worldviews here. Good.
- [59:38]
Tai Lopez
Let's do it.
- [59:39]
Tom Bilyeu
There's so much about what you're saying that. That I agree with very much.
- [59:43]
Tai Lopez
I think it's bang more interesting when you disagree.
- [59:46]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so the. The thing that I agree with one just on the. The last part. I think that getting back to nature is very interesting. And while both my wife and I are very much city people, to your point about, you really have to map yourself, even if you're talking to your enemies, to figure out exactly who you are. I completely buy what Nietzsche said about we're. We really are blind to ourselves. And it's only through feedback. We actually have a system here at Impact Theory that we got from Ray Dalio called the dot collector. And the dot collector allows people to give you real time feedback constantly, all the time, on, like, 40 different variables. And then over time, you develop this cloud of dots that really begins to tell you, are you good at this thing or not good at that thing? And it is pretty surprising how often you're not good at something you thought you were going, yeah. So that has certainly been eye opening.
- [60:35]
Tai Lopez
But 16 under. The average man overestimates his ability to have a street to win at a street fight by 1600%.
- [60:43]
Tom Bilyeu
Jesus.
- [60:44]
Tai Lopez
You ever meet man is like, that's what I told you. Men are out here so out of shape now. They're pulling muscles during podcasts. But man's like, I could whip this guy's ass.
- [60:55]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [60:55]
Tai Lopez
Anyway, a little bit.
- [60:57]
Tom Bilyeu
Not at all. A little bit of delusion goes a long way. The most delusional people are the happiest, so.
- [61:02]
Tai Lopez
But they die younger. You know that they die. I went to Argentina.
- [61:05]
Tom Bilyeu
If you run into a fight that you were that outmatched, yes, you're going to die young.
- [61:09]
Tai Lopez
I went to Buenos Aires. My friend got married there. He's Argentinian. And his karate teacher went, who was a very overweight Asian dude who overestimate. He literally, when we're all flew down the same time, he goes, I'm a black belt. I got you all protected. He's like, he was real cocky. He's like, I know what I'm doing. You looked at the guy, you're like, bro, you can't protect yourself from donuts. How are you gonna protect us in Argentina? We land in Argentina, first day we go visit. It's called the Pink House. It's their version of the White House. Guess who's the first man robbed? That guy. That guy he overestimated. He wore a Rolex in Buenos Aires. You don't wear Rolexes in South America. A motorcycle, somebody came up, tapped him on the shoulder. He had a backpack, said, your backpack's open. Another dude came on a. So it distracted him. Another dude came on a moped and grabbed his watch off while he was like looking back. The other dude jumped onto it. So this fat karate guy is running down the street after a moped full of two guys. I mean, with two guys on a stalls. I ran him down. I said, bro, what you gonna do when you get there? You're gonna stop these BO dudes gonna turn around and stab you to death, you know? Overestimation of men. Men also overestimate their looks. You know, women there are delusional women, but more men think they're good looking than that are ugly than women do. That surprises people because now society saying men are women are more delusional. Women get quicker feedback other women, if they act too pretty. Women pop in your their DMs and say you ain't that good. Guys never care about their men. Other friends looks anyway, off on a tangent.
- [62:45]
Tom Bilyeu
Very interesting. Well, I mean, it's all related to the same idea of understanding yourselves. The foibles that we all have. Psychology being at the root of this. I mean it, it really. The reason I wanted to start this interview with you in particular on this is I really do think you are good at identifying what people are like, which is exactly what made you such an effective marketer. And so the, the delineation I'm trying to draw because I think it really is going to matter in people's lives is there is what is. And then There is what could be. And I think even though I actually don't believe in free will, you have to act as if it is real. Otherwise I you slide denialism and I don't think that's an effective strategy. And even if I'm just pre programmed to say that hey I'm doing my job. So it to me, no matter what, you need to act as if you have free will. You need to look at the different branching options in front of you and say which one is going to and what I advise people to do, identify your goal and then what choice is going to be most effective in moving you towards your goal. Very simple. So taking my dad and Dad, I love you. Sorry to drag you into this podcast. The way that I would look at that is that my dad did not have the right ideas to build his frame of reference. And if you build the wrong frame of reference, which quick encapsulation, your frame of reference is your values and your beliefs. So your values, what you believe ought to be true of yourself in the world and your beliefs are what you believe to actually be true about you and the world. So one is sort of a moral judgment and the other other is just a recognition of fact. The problem is we're terrible at recognizing facts. So we oftentimes, especially if we don't know ourselves well, we're painting ourselves into a corner that keeps us smaller than we need to be. Now because my life is so evenly divided into me before said ideas and me after set ideas, I know the path that I was on. My parents taught me to be a good employee, to keep my head down, do as little work as possible and avoid punishment at all costs. So that's how I was raised. And then I realized to achieve my goals, that playbook isn't going to work. And because I rank high in mating, all of this comes down to I feel ashamed that I'm not living up to my then girlfriend now wife what I told her I was going to do and become in order to win her affections and be able to sleep with her and all the amazing stuff.
- [65:02]
Tai Lopez
Schopenhauers and men are just driven by three things. Food, sex, and maybe boredom too.
- [65:09]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, it's interesting. Although I do like your you tagged a fourth one onto that which was envy, right?
- [65:14]
Tai Lopez
Yes, I thought I have my own. Not that I'm smart enough to maybe so bold to correct Schopenhauer, but studies and pessimism. I threw a little tweak in it. Envy.
- [65:25]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I would agree with that.
- [65:26]
Tai Lopez
You know how Many men do that they don't want to do, but they got to beat that guy over there.
- [65:30]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes.
- [65:31]
Tai Lopez
Like, I don't even want these shoes. But this guy has the shoes. Therefore I will have the shoes that I don't care about. Yeah.
- [65:38]
Tom Bilyeu
Even if it's not pathological. So, for instance, we build video games. Yeah. And you always want to work a leaderboard into your video game because it's fun. Even if it's only like the leaderboard only shows you and your friends.
- [65:50]
Tai Lopez
Yes.
- [65:50]
Tom Bilyeu
It's still fun to be like, oh, I managed to beat you. I climbed.
- [65:54]
Tai Lopez
Snapchat was the first thing to threaten. Now TikTok has threatened Mark Zuckerberg's empire of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. But the first one to threaten it was this. The. The youngest billionaire up to that time of Evan Spiel. I think he was a billionaire at 24. Whoa. Married a supermodel. Came out of nowhere. I'm talking two years or something. I forget the story. I think he got fired from something else. Like, fuck them, I'm going to build Snapchat becomes a billionaire. Snap Score. So, Pete, the more you snapped, you would do streaks and all this bullshit. I remember, dude, Snap was a. I. Snap really helped me. I caught it talking about catching trends. I was one of the first people to a million followers on Snap. They wouldn't tell you how many you had, which I think was a mistake. They didn't. They hid the envy. But my rep told me you had a million. I remember Kylie had 10 million.
- [66:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Jesus.
- [66:42]
Tai Lopez
But they would highlight me on the Snap story. I got 18 million views one time on my first. On my story, on the first Snap. It was crazy. But anyway, yes. Going back to your thing. Snapchat was smart. Just by Snap Score. You know, they basically caught up to a 10 year old Facebook and Instagram.
- [67:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. I mean, anybody that can do the new thing, that can tap into the
- [67:05]
Tai Lopez
psychology and then add envy.
- [67:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. I mean, that certainly is one of the plays. My thing is so going back to my dad. It's.
- [67:15]
Tai Lopez
He.
- [67:15]
Tom Bilyeu
He had a frame of reference that was not effective. If his goal was, yeah, I really want to exert my will into the world. I want to do the things that I think are amazing. If you had asked him, and I know because I have, the thing he wanted to do was work on cars for a living. That was the thing he just loved. But anyway, he lets himself get trapped in expectations. He shouldn't have had kids. He has kids. That takes you down. A certain should have kids.
- [67:40]
Tai Lopez
Where you wouldn't be here.
- [67:41]
Tom Bilyeu
My kids. No. My dad will be the first to tell you he shouldn't have had kids, but that he did. He's obviously so kind and loving and I love my dad and we get along great. And he's like, look, I shouldn't have had kids, but now it's the greatest joy of my life. Like, I mean, the whole thing.
- [67:56]
Tai Lopez
People should have kids.
- [67:58]
Tom Bilyeu
We'll get into that because I actually agree with you, despite the fact that I'm not having kids. But I think it's the safest place.
- [68:03]
Tai Lopez
You're not done?
- [68:05]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm done. Yeah.
- [68:06]
Tai Lopez
We'll see. Have you ever been sure. In something and change your mind?
- [68:10]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, but let's say I changed my mind. My wife is 44, so bonchons, my friend.
- [68:16]
Tai Lopez
We.
- [68:17]
Tom Bilyeu
We'd have to go way the out of our way. Anyway, we'll come back to that very interesting super conversation. And as a psa, I think the vast majority of people, if you want. But if you're on the fence, the vast majority of people should for reasons of populating the world and fulfillment. I think fulfillment is the reason I say it. But okay. So anyway, my dad. Frame of reference, not moving. He doesn't have a growth mindset. So he doesn't believe I can do anything that I set my mind facing your property. That's okay.
- [68:46]
Tai Lopez
I owe you. So, Adrian, put it on my bill. One armrest. I like this. You should just keep it this way
- [68:54]
Tom Bilyeu
forever that you were here.
- [68:56]
Tai Lopez
Yeah, I know. When people ask, you just say, I had this maniac.
- [69:00]
Tom Bilyeu
You don't have to say my name is wrong.
- [69:01]
Tai Lopez
It was a maniac here. And we argued about free will and he, you know, start ripping things and throwing just exactly.
- [69:11]
Tom Bilyeu
We won't have to argue about.
- [69:12]
Tai Lopez
But you got to embellish. This is Hollywood. Hollywood doesn't tell the truth, man.
- [69:16]
Tom Bilyeu
I have a very difficult time embellishing. It's not my shtick.
- [69:19]
Tai Lopez
You have cartoons on the wall. They're not real. That's embellishment.
- [69:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting storytelling to you is embellishment.
- [69:26]
Tai Lopez
Well, cartoons. I see Wonder Woman there. There ain't no woman that looks like that. It's embellishment. By the way, can I throw something out that I haven't told many people? That is what sometimes people ask, what's the current things running through your mind. It's not the Roman Empire. I did that like 10 years ago. That's old news. Real old. The thing to be thinking about now is what has the world forgot to put into the calculation of life. One plus one is two. Okay, we got that one down. Great. Even big government knows that one plus one. $1 to the IRS plus $1 to the California tax attorney equals $2 if you make four. I was in the 52 and a half percent tax bracket. Yay for the US. Every million dollars you make, you get $520,000 to the government. And they can't even fix the potholes. I don't know where that money went. Part I won't say to who I know. Anyway, here's the thing nobody thinks about. And I'm not the person to invent it, but I'm going to popularize it. There was a several famous scientist who came up with this term of risk aversion. Humans are risk averse. So we have all these things. You have Myers Briggs 16 personalities. You know, you're an ENTP, ENFJ, INFJ somewhat. Doesn't help people to find out they're an advocate or something. It's a stupid test that 800 million people have taken. No offense to that company, but the Myers Briggs test is. That's okay for dating, but it, it's subpar because we forgot one thing. Do you know there's a possibility the only difference between you and your dad is he was low risk taker and you're high. I find that to be the most predictive thing. I have a big. You know, I've got phone sales guys who sell for me. I used to teach them this system called the PACE system. You analyze people's personalities. You break them into practical action, social or emotional. And you tweak your sales pitch to their personality. Okay. I now have a more advanced system called tens. Threat based, empathy based, novelty based, structure based, it's more based off hormones. But I'm the first person to introduce. There's no quiz ever made by a human that factors in your risk tolerance. Now I tell my sales guys, fuck reading people. Tell me, all you got to know is two things about somebody. Do they actually have any liquid money? Because you can't sell somebody something for 10 bucks if they only have 9 bucks in the bank. Number two, are they low, medium or high risk taker? Dude, you can live your whole life if you're watching me, you want to learn how to read people. And by today, the end of the day, by midnight, be better than 99% of all psychologists, all therapists, all great thinkers when it comes to human behavior. You can just learn one thing. Learn to read people. So let me ask you something. Have you ever Punched somebody after age 12?
- [72:17]
Tom Bilyeu
No.
- [72:18]
Tai Lopez
Okay. Bungee jumping, any. Do you do anything scary?
- [72:25]
Tom Bilyeu
I run a company.
- [72:27]
Tai Lopez
Well, it's the ultimate risk.
- [72:28]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. No, I agree.
- [72:29]
Tai Lopez
Have you ever bet at all on something that could have lost it all? Yes, a significant amount.
- [72:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, my entire house. Every dollar I had in the bank.
- [72:39]
Tai Lopez
Okay, so you're a high risk taker.
- [72:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Only entrepreneurially, but that counts.
- [72:44]
Tai Lopez
So actually scientists break out fearfulness. So there's a hexaco score. 25. The most accurate personality test was 25 sub facets. Hexaco. H is for honesty, ease, emotionality. X is extroversion. A is agreeableness. C is conscientiousness. Owes openness to new experience. They all break down into sub facets. There's about 25 of them under emotionality. It actually is very intelligent. It differentiates. A test built in like 1990s differentiates between fearfulness, which you have high fearfulness. You don't like going on a motorcycle 100 miles an hour. You don't like, you know, jumping out of a plane. I'm like that too. I don't like physical pain. I've already, I do jiu jitsu. I've done boxing like a lot of my life. I've already been hitting. I'm not excited about that. But we have low anxiety, we have ability to take risk anxiety, high anxiety
- [73:35]
Tom Bilyeu
and inability to take risk.
- [73:37]
Tai Lopez
So just so you know. Not really. But in your conscious mind you have anxiety, but in your behavior, my friend, an anxious, low risk taker does not bet their home, does not bet at all. Could you have lost a lot? Yes.
- [73:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Here's what's interesting, Ty. So I. I think you're making a misassessment of the complexity of how people make these decisions. So for instance, hang with me. The reason that I was willing to bet the house is I. My sense of identity is not tied up into whether I win or lose a business. So I will have no emotional devastation if I lose that house. So I went to my wife, I got her buy in. If I lose the house, whatever, it is what it is. But if I don't, that is a
- [74:21]
Tai Lopez
high, that is a low anxiety behavior, my friend.
- [74:24]
Tom Bilyeu
Well, tying it to anxiety I think is going to be misleading because if
- [74:28]
Tai Lopez
I lose everything, I'm good with it. There. That's not high anxiety.
- [74:32]
Tom Bilyeu
So here, here's where this gets complicated. I struggle with anxiety every day of my life. So experientially, being Tom Bilyeu is a constant anxiety management game. Now I think that my anxiety though was Born of the body, it's not born of the mind. And so it's diet based. It's dysfunction in the gut, whatever, whatever. And so now you've got. Experientially I'm anxious, but temperamentally I have a high threshold for risk when it matches my frame of reference, which we never close the loop on that. Everybody has a frame of reference. It is the funhouse mirror through which you view the world. And you're going to make decisions based on all the weird distortions that are unique to you. If I thought losing my house or my business failing would make me a loser, then I wouldn't have done it. Because if I. If I valued myself based on what other people thought of me and that were true, that's how I would play. I am very much. While I fully acknowledge we are both the shout and the echo. So the shout is what you do, the echo is what people think about what you do. But I'm not swayed a lot by the echo that comes back. It's certainly a factor, but it's not a driving thing for me. But I do have a set of beliefs about what I ought to to do. And I, in my belief system ought to swing for the fences. I ought to leave it all out on the field and play to win. And so that sense of identity and belief set and values led me to say risking the house, while it is certainly high financial risk, is not a high emotional risk. And I value how I feel about myself when I'm by myself above everything.
- [76:09]
Tai Lopez
Yeah, I would just say the simple ways. Unconsciously you have low anxiety and consciously you have high anxiety. You have your mind. People's mind can race, but if you look at their. I might look. This is the difference between me and where. When I go on podcasts, where if you understand this one thing about me I'm not that interested in. I find people's conscious mind boring. I'm not talking about you. The conscious mind is a very.
- [76:33]
Tom Bilyeu
You're bored by my conscious mind?
- [76:34]
Tai Lopez
No, no, it's not you. I'm not. I wouldn't have come back on your show. I don't find you boring at all. I find you interesting in general. If you look at my behavior, I think to be a therapist would be torture to me. How are you feeling today about how do you feel? That's how the. I don't care because in general that is just 10% of you like the iceberg. And so for you, I. A therapist would be like, you're very high anxiety. A guy like me, who cares about what you do. You're very low anxiety. You bet it all and you win. High risk, high reward. So we're kind of talking semantics with each other.
- [77:17]
Tom Bilyeu
I don't think we are. I think this is where our world views collide in a very fascinating way.
- [77:23]
Tai Lopez
Maybe English doesn't have enough words for what? Like the Eskimos have a hundred words or whatever for snow. I think we don't have enough words in English for anxiety because there's many types of anxiety.
- [77:33]
Tom Bilyeu
Maybe around anxiety we don't, but I think we can get to an understanding of where we have a different frame of reference. And because we have different, what I call base assumptions, we are. We're not having the argument at the right level. And so the way that I see it is you have a base assumption that the 50% of you that's hardwired is effectively all you need to pay attention to. And I'm saying I agree with you.
- [77:55]
Tai Lopez
You should. No, we agree on that. Look, I'm an entrepreneur too. If you don't take action, you will lose if you only rely on your genes. For example, LeBron James. You meet the guy I want. I once. I'm friends with one of the Lakers and he's like, yo, I'm in New York. You want to come out to a club with us? I get there and I knew somebody was in that room that was special because they're like frisking me down. I even have my own security. Usually I can come into places. They're like, well, we do extra security here. And there's LeBron James. The man's kind of not the same species. If you see him, okay, he's not really. He's a 6 foot 8, 8% body fat. His head's about that big. He's just a big kind of non homo sapien. Okay, Homo sapiens supermanus. Okay, that's genes. But if he had eaten Doritos and had no drive and no risk taking. It takes a lot of risk to try to go become a basketball player. He would have been a nobody. So don't. I am not a fatalistic in the sense. And I do think, like quantum physics has shown us that there is possible free will too. It's a very weird thing, this bog. Did you see the new Oppenheimer movie?
- [79:05]
Tom Bilyeu
No.
- [79:06]
Tai Lopez
So it's probably, probably gonna win Academy award for multiple things. Even though I thought it was only a 7 out of 10. I like the new movie that came out better, the one with DiCaprio. The what? Is it Adrian Flowers of the Killers of the Flower Moon. That's a better movie with De Niro. But there's a scene that nobody catches. So Oppenheimer, the main character, he comes and at the beginning, at the end, he talks to Einstein out by a pond for a few minutes. And they finally reveal at the end what Einstein whispered to him. And he said something like this. Ah, the man who seeks, who believes in uncertainty, comes from me for certainty. So classical physics, the way we used to understand the world is things were certain. That's why Einstein did not believe in free will. It was certain. You're predestined. It's fatalistic. But quantum theory, which Einstein hated and went to his death kind of fighting Hawking, you know, came up with like this m theory. There's 5:1 to the 500 universes in the world multiverse. When you go to measure things, you change them so you can never measure what's actually happening. You know, string theory, that things are wrapped up so small and that they just appear out of nowhere. Like Hawking talked about that. So Einstein joked in the movie, it's a very intellectual joke that zero people got in the audience. But I was like, ah, it's like the man who believes in uncertainty comes from me to certainty. What Einstein was saying is we want certainty and we want uncertainty. And what I'm saying is there's a certain certainty to our life that comes from our family. But to feel good, I need to know there's uncertainty, that I can fix my damn life. That sucks. And I do. And what we now know. And I'm an amateur physicist, not even an amateur, but I listen to the best and I'm good at remembering what people say. You know, there's probably both happening. There's a. You want to hear a good. Another good quote? This is a crazy pull up the book Contiki. Whoever ever read. You ever heard the story of Kon Tiki? It's one of the great adventure stories. This Norwegian guy wanted to prove that you could go across the Pacific Ocean, let that stick in in a little raft, and he did it. It may seem at times as if invisible fingers move us about like puppets on a string. But for sure we are not be born to be dragged along. We can reach back and grab the strings ourselves and adjust our course at every crossroads or take off on any little trail into the unknown. That is probably the truth. We are both puppets that are being manipulated by our genes and non free will. That's classic physics. But yet quantum physics says we can reach back and say, I don't like the strings and pull back a little bit. That's a great analogy for what I believe.